“Okay!” the van’s driver called. “Let’s get all the people onto the shuttle for the airport now. Everyone taking the shuttle to the airport, please bring your luggage to me!”
She liked the musical sound of his accent. The way he said “pee-puhl” for people and danced, tongue tapping, over the word shuttle.
She thought she might have liked this place if she’d come at a different time, or in some other, completely different set of circumstances. When Caleb told her back in the fall that he and Ellen were going to get married here, she’d mentally packed herself a suitcase full of new sundresses and beach paperbacks. She’d laid by the fantasy pool on a fantasy lounger in a fantasy bikini, skin shiny with oil, holding Tony’s hand. She’d looked fantastic—the product of months of work at the gym with Marc, sculpting her body back into shape. And Tony had noticed. He’d stared at her. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her.
In her fantasy.
Over by the column, Katie smiled, and Sean leaned down and kissed her. It was the kind of kiss that Amber had almost forgotten existed—a long and lingering kiss that wasn’t meant to go anywhere in particular. A kiss like breathing, like saying I love you, I want you, I need you with every shared breath.
It kept going. Her chest got tight and achy. Her eyes hurt in that tired, watery way, like she’d been staring at the roadway of her life through the high beams for too long, and she just wanted to close them. She wanted to rest.
Tony kissed her before bed and when he left for work—quick and perfunctory.
They kissed when they were going to have sex.
They didn’t kiss out in the open, for no reason but the pleasure of it.
You’ll lose that, she thought.
And then she hated herself for being such a bitter old hag.
Hated that the thought made her want to cry even more, and that there wasn’t any place or any time for her to cry. Not for hours and hours.
She hated that she’d become the kind of woman who looked forward to the next time she could be alone to cry.
In the last few months, Amber had felt herself slipping off course—moving in a misshapen orbit that pushed her farther and farther away from the life she wanted to live. When she tried to figure out the when and the why of it, she couldn’t put her finger on any one thing that had changed. It was more like a hundred little asteroids had come along and knocked her out of alignment. Her dad’s stroke over a year ago. Tony’s mom dying a few months later, and Patrick tucking himself into a tight downward spiral that had culminated in his decision to quit working for Mazzara Construction.
Longer ago, the housing bubble popping with a wet splat. Tony starting to work more hours for less money. Then more hours. More.
Jacob starting full-day school, leaving Amber alone in an empty house for the first time in a decade, and her realization that she was supposed to feel elated, but really what she felt was alone.
She’d lost whatever sun she’d once orbited around, and without it—without that feeling of knowing herself, of being known—there was a part of her that never warmed. A part of her that was always shivering and cold, right on the verge of tears, and loud in its misery. Loud. So that the real work of her days, even as she took the kids to play dates and bought milk and gassed up the car, became keeping it quiet. Shushing it sternly, yelling at it if she had to, because if she didn’t keep it in check, she ended up crying in the kitchen in the middle of the day with no one around but the
dog to notice, and that wouldn’t do.
It wouldn’t do at all.
“Do you have any crackers?” Jacob asked.
“Just the ones with peanut butter.”
“Do those have milk in them?”
“Yeah. But I think I have one of those Rice Krispie bars in my purse, too. If you can keep down the pretzels, I’ll give it to you at the airport.”
Jacob perked up. “I thought it was for Ant.”
“Ant just lost it.”
Though it looked like Anthony was getting a consolation prize. Over at his bench, her mother had produced a red bag from her purse full of some kind of candy he immediately tore into. They probably had the dye in them that made him absolutely apeshit. He shoved several in his mouth, and her mom started steering him toward the van.
“You ready to try this, bub?” Amber asked Jacob.
“Sure.”
She stood up. When he held out his arms, she lifted him to her hip, even though he was too big for it. Six years old—people gave them funny looks sometimes. But he was her baby. Her last baby. When he stopped wanting her to carry him, no one ever would again.
They walked across the lobby. Jacob rested his head against her neck, and a rogue tear got away from her. It worked its way down her cheek to her neck before she could free a hand to wipe it away. When she’d managed to take another deep breath and get herself under control, she looked up to see Tony watching her.